The character played by Imelda Staunton in 'Harry Potter' movie saga was inspired by someone whom the author 'disliked intensely on sight.'
- Nov 1, 2014
AceShowbiz - J.K. Rowling published a new "Harry Potter" story that gave depth to Dolores Umbridge, a former professor at Hogwarts. While offering "revealing first-person" thoughts about the cruel teacher, the author revealed that the character was inspired by a real person.
She wrote Dolores based on her former teacher whom she "disliked intensely on sight." She said, "The woman in question returned my antipathy with interest. Why we took against each other so instantly, heartily and (on my side, at least) irrationally, I honestly cannot say."
The woman, much like the fictional Dolores, had a "pronounced taste for twee accessories." Her love for "tiny little plastic bow slide," frills and undersized handbags was more appropriate "to a girl of three," the best-selling author said on her official blog Pottermore.com.
However, Rowling said the similarity ended there. She said her former teacher "was NOT 'the real Dolores Umbridge.' She did not look like a toad, she was never sadistic or vicious to me or anyone else, and I never heard her express a single view in common with Umbridge."
"However, it is true to say that I borrowed from her, then grossly exaggerated, a taste for the sickly sweet and girlish in dress, and it was that tiny little pale lemon plastic bow that I was remembering when I perched the fly-like ornament on Dolores Umbridge's head."
Additionally, Dolores' love of anything decorated with kittens was inspired by Rowling's former female coworker who "had covered the wall space behind her desk with pictures of fluffy kitties."
"She was the most bigoted, spiteful champion of the death penalty with whom it has ever been my misfortune to share a kettle," the author said. "A love of all things saccharine often seems present where there is a lack of real warmth or charity."
Dolores as "an amalgam of traits taken from these, and a variety of sources" became one of the characters Rowling felt "purest dislike." She explained, "Her desire to control, to punish and to inflict pain, all in the name of law and order, are, I think, every bit as reprehensible as Lord Voldemort's unvarnished espousal of evil."
Rowling also revealed Dolores' background story. Contrary to her strong hatred towards Muggle, the former Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher was actually half-blood. She hated both of her parents; her father for his lack of ambition and her mother for her Muggle lineage.
After the events in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", Dolores quietly slipped back unpunished into her former position in the Ministry. She, however, was eventually "put on trial for her enthusiastic co-operation with his regime, and convicted of the torture, imprisonment and deaths of several people," after Voldemort fell from his grace.
